Alan Kay (judge)
Alan Kay is a United States Magistrate Judge in Washington DC. Education Legal career From 1959 to 1967 Kay served as first a public defender and as a federal prosecutor. From 1967 to 1991 he was in private practice. He became a Magistrate Judge in 1991. Rulings on Guantanamo habeas corpus petitions He is notable because he has heard several habeas corpus petitions submitted on behalf of captives held in extrajudicial detention in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. mirror Kay was the judge authorized to rule on issues arising from the "protective order" that set out the procedures the captives' attorneys had to follow. Salim Muhood Adem v. George W. Bush On March 25 2006 Fox News quoted extensively from a 33 page ruling Kay made on the habeas corpus petitions of 56 Guantanamo captives who had contacted their attorneys through fellow captives. Guantanamo captives habeas petitions were being filed on their behalf by their "next friend". Prior to the Supreme Courts' 2004 ruling in Rasul v. Bush all of the next friends had been non-captives, friends or family. But the Ruhal v. Bush opened the possibility that Guantanamo captives could be referred to lawyers through fellow captives who already had an attorney. Kay characterized the administrative delays the Department of Defense was imposing on the captives as being a "catch 22". Until lawyers were confirmed as the captives counsel, they were not allowed to use the speedier, more secure, habeas attorney-client mail service. They had to rely on the US postal service, which could routinely take six months, and was subject to military censorship. In his ruling Kay confirmed that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being referred to attorneys by their fellow captives. Attorneys for captive Salim Muhood Adem had appealed for access to him. The Department of Justice was denying them access because they didn't have a letter officially authorizing them as his attorneys. They claimed that they had drafted a letter, which Adem could sign authorizing them as his attorneys, but that the camp authorities had failed to deliver it. While Kay ruled camp authorities must allow attorneys a chance to meet with the potential clients, to introduce themselves, and discuss signing the letter authorizing them to serve on the captives' behalf, he declined to rule that United States Department of Justice lawyers should be held in contempt for bad faith. Kiyemba v. Bush The Department of Justice challenged Kay's ruling in Kiyemba v. Bush in July 2006. The Department of Justice had argued that Kay had been stripped of jurisdiction in Guantanamo cases by the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. Miguel Tejada's steroid case Kay accepted a guilty plea from former Oakland Athletics's baseball player Miguel Tejada. Tejada pled guilty to withholding evidence of the use of steroids when he testified before a committee of the United States Congress in 2005. References Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:Judges presiding over Guantanamo habeas petitions Category:United States magistrate judges Category:Judges of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia